Future-Proof Foolishness

The vacuous term Future Proof really sets me off.

Per Niels Bohr, “it is difficult to predict, especially the future.” This quip should be top-of-mind nowadays, when disruption is the prevailing paradigm. Think Amazon, Donald Trump, and climate change. All were around but inconsequential 20 years ago. Now, in 2019, they’ve radically altered commerce, government, and, we’ve finally realized, everyday life.

Project ahead 20 years, to 2039. Say we’ve landed humans on Mars then, per the bit of cutesy marketing I’ve clipped below. In 2040, do you plan to be navigating folders via a Web browser on a laptop like the one illustrated? Not in my plans. This bit of cutesy marketing is just fluff.

We all know that the notion of a “Future-Proof CMS” — or any system — is bunk. Solutions are designed for today’s conditions; it’s foolish to create a detailed product roadmap that extends more than a couple of years out. Sure, plan paths forward — paths plural, with alternatives and contingencies that accommodate foreseeable emerging conditions and allow for inevitable-but-unpredictable disruptors. Your plans should be open to change rather than proof — locked down — against it or so over-developed, anticipating change that may never occur and that will certainly not occur precisely as expected, as to result in expensive bloatware.

“Future proof”? It’s not desirable and it’s not even possible. So let’s get real and ditch this foolish notion.